The present invention relates generally to storage utilization by computer applications and, more particularly, to modeling the applications and storage used thereby, monitoring application service level objectives, and flexible reporting on storage resources.
An important aspect of managing a computer system involves managing the storage utilized in the computer system. IT (Information Technology) organizations spend a considerable amount of time and effort to develop tracking processes to correlate storage resources back to the respective business applications that rely on them. Without accurate storage reporting, there are no assurances that storage service levels are being met and proper storage planning is extremely challenging. A wide range of storage management statistics is required for complete storage reporting, including storage system configurations, application and storage performance statistics, applicable storage paths, and the like. Usually this information is collected and stored across several storage management tools without an easy way to combine and analyze all relevant information in an integrated fashion.
Most reports on storage capacity and performance have well-known predefined attributes (otherwise known as columns). Many reporting tools allow the generation of custom reports by selecting only the columns and rows of interest. However, these reports typically apply to storage in general rather than to storage used by specific applications or business entities such as departments or data centers utilizing those applications. The tools that allow reporting on the storage used by applications or business entities require a definition of hard-coded custom reports or storage labeling schemes (i.e., attaching a description to each LDEV which follows a company convention). When the company organization or reporting requirements change, a significant effort is needed to change these custom reporting schemes on storage capacity.